Genesis Belanger: Blow Out

Psychologically charged mise-en-scènes composed of idiosyncratic versions of everyday objects. Working in a multitude of handicrafts, the artist conjures up installations of unresolved tension on the edge of a temporal collapse. Genesis Belanger’s vocabulary is lifted from the 1950s and is infused with a sense of lobotomized capitalist productivity, choosing liminal spaces, such hotel lobbies or office waiting rooms, as subject-matter.

In Belanger’s practice, the body is absent, inviting the viewer to enter as purposeful actor. In her immersive scenes, objects become surrogate for the female body: pursed lips emerge from matching stoneware lamps, fingers sprout from a bouquet, and a hot dog wiggles itself into a wedge heel. Belanger’s three-dimensional work, although situated within the legacy of Claes Oldenburg and Robert Gober, is principally concerned with the manifestation of capitalist myths on a gendered psyche.